An Artistic Homicide (Lainswich Witches Book 11)

by Raven Snow

  “More clumsy?” Karen repeated.

  Rowen nodded. “Right. Did he trip over his own feet? Did he fall and hit his head?”

  Karen lapsed into silence again. She looked from Tina to Rowen, her eyes searching. It was obvious that she was beginning to suspect they had ulterior motives for asking her out here. “Are you implying that that’s how Dayveed was killed? He tripped and hit his head?”

  “I don’t think it’s outside of the realm of possibility. I mean, obviously, I hope that’s not the case. I don’t want to find out my cousin is even partly responsible for what happened.” Rowen kept trying to play the blaming Peony angle.

  “I guess that could have happened. I did see him stumble once or twice. I didn’t think a lot of it at the time.” It was no great surprise that Karen was latching on to any theory that meant Dayveed’s death had been someone else’s fault.

  “I have this other theory,” Rowen began, ready to get to the heart of the matter. “I think someone might have shoved Dayveed.”

  Karen’s face drained of some of its color. “What?”

  “I think someone might have shoved him,” Rowen repeated. “They didn’t mean to hurt him, but he lost his balance and fell. He cracked his head against his own statue, and that was that. The person who shoved him moved the body and drew a pentagram to try and shift the blame. It didn’t work all that well outside of stirring up some outrage in town.”

  “Who would do that sort of thing?” asked Karen.

  “Someone with a short fuse and a lot to lose. It could have been anyone.” Rowen paused here. She looked Karen up and down. “It could have even been you.”

  Karen laughed. It was a very forced sound. She was trying to play this off like it was one big joke. “Yeah right,” she said. “Whoever did it had to be a heck of a lot stronger than me. How else did they move the body?”

  “I dunno. You look pretty strong.” Rowen realized, too late, that she had shown her hand with that little comment.

  “You really think I did it.” Karen stood.

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you did it on purpose,” Tina offered.

  “I’m going to take my lunch to go.” Karen headed toward the front counter.

  “Hang on!” Rowen called after her. “Let’s just talk about this.” But it seemed that Karen was done talking.

  “Seems like we really screwed this up. We didn’t find anything out, and now she knows you’re on to her,” said Tina. “What do we do now?”

  “We did find something out.” Rowen now felt more confident than ever that Karen was the killer. Accident or not, it was still murder. She should have come forward when it happened. “Now we just have to confirm what we know.”

  “And how do we do that?” asked Tina.

  “We go to someone else who knows about this whole thing. And we do it quick, before Karen has a chance to tip them off.”

  ***

  Rowen had to call Rose in order to figure out where she needed to go. Rose was pretty savvy when it came to tracking people down online. It, quite frankly, creeped Rowen out a little bit. Regardless, it was a handy skill to have in their arsenal. “Let’s see… It looks like around this time of day… He manages a seafood restaurant.”

  “Which one?” asked Rowen.

  “The Reef,” Rose said after a moment. “The one that’s right across from the gallery.”

  That made total sense. “Thanks.” Rowen hung up and headed there, Tina in tow. “Just let me do the talking,” she told her.

  “Sure. You do what you have to do.” Tina didn’t say anything for a few minutes after that. She looked out the window, watching the landscape go by and being totally silent. “You don’t think this is really Peony’s fault, do you?” she finally asked.

  That was a question that had been weighing heavily on Rowen’s mind. She was a bit annoyed that Tina had asked it but couldn’t fault her for it. It was kind of a big deal. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s possible that Dayveed wouldn’t have fell into the statue when Karen shoved him had he not been hexed.”

  Tina shook her head. “I should have stopped her.”

  “You were there for the hex?”

  “Yeah.” Tina gave a long, weary sigh. “I was there to ride with her to the gallery. The show was starting soon, and she wanted to be there in plenty of time. The hex was kind of an afterthought. We were talking about how mean and unwelcoming Karen and Dayveed had been to her. She didn’t think anything of it. She just did the hex really quick before we left. I thought it was innocent stuff, honestly. I can only assume Peony thought so too.”

  “I’m sure she did. She’s a good person. This was just… irresponsible of her.”

  ***

  Rowen parked outside of The Reef once they got there. It was a plain looking building with a sign you couldn’t see from the road. What you could see was the five-foot plastic crab standing in front of the doors. “I hate this place,” Rowen mumbled, mostly to herself.

  “Really?” Tina asked, getting out of the car. “I think they’re alright. I like their lobster.”

  “Crabs creep me out,” Rowen explained, giving the plastic crab a wide berth on her way in. Fortunately, there was no lunch rush inside. A hostess stood at a podium in the front, doodling on a napkin. She looked up when they came in. “Oh, hi. Just the two of you?”

  “Actually, we’re here to see the manager. Tod?” Rowen tried to assume her most cheerful, non-threatening expression. Based on the puzzled look the hostess gave her, she might not have succeeded.

  “Um, okay.” The hostess stepped away from her podium. “I’ll go get him for you.”

  Rowen and Tina exchanged looks. Together, they stood there waiting for what certainly felt like an agonizingly long amount of time. Rowen’s heart was pounding in her chest. What was she supposed to do if this was a dead end? What if her instincts were wrong? Rowen did her best to push that from her mind. She needed to take things one step at a time.

  The hostess returned, and Tod came with them. “Did you need something?” He frowned, narrowing his eyes a bit when they settled on Rowen. “You’re that woman who did the interview with us at the gallery.”

  Bingo. “I had a few more questions and Karen told me I could find you here.” That was a blatant lie. Rowen just hoped that Karen hadn’t called ahead before she got there. If that was the case then she was screwed.

  “Yeah, sure I guess.” Tod led them toward the back. They passed by the mostly empty tables into a hall with bathrooms and an entrance to the kitchen in it. They passed all those things by and, instead, went to a door in the very back. This opened up to reveal a rather cluttered office. “Take a seat,” Tod offered, moving to sit behind his desk. Rowen and Tina did just that. “So what brings the two of you here?”

  “We just got out of a very interesting interview with your sister.” Rowen had been thinking about what she would say on the drive over there. “Your sister mentioned some things to us that… don’t really line up with the last interview we had with her. Honestly, I wanted to check in with you before I went to the cops.”

  “What?” Tod’s face drained of color.

  There it was. A wave of vindication swept over Rowen. He knew. She could see it in his eyes. She had seen that same look the first time she interviewed him. She hadn’t paid enough attention to it then, but now? Now, she could tell. He was about to crack. “You helped Karen move the body.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” That wasn’t true at all. Even Tod didn’t look like he felt his lie was very convincing. “What body?”

  “You know. Dayveed. Your sister called you up a few nights ago. She’d caused a horrible accident and needed your help. And you did just that. You helped her out like any good brother would.” Rowen maintained eye contact. “She couldn’t move the body on her own, so you helped. The two of you left behind the pentagram on the back of the statue. That was a desperate act of two people trying to shift the blame somewhere else.
Anywhere else.”

  “I don’t-” Tod began.

  Rowen cut him off. “Don’t lie about it. Can you really live the rest of your life like this? That’s a lot to carry on your shoulders. Too much. I know I couldn’t do it.” She wasn’t trying to manipulate him this time. Rowen meant all that.

  Tod looked down at his desk. “She never meant to hurt anyone.”

  Thank God. Rowen had been afraid he would deny what had happened like Karen had. “I know,” she told him. “It was just bad luck.”

  “It happened in the morning.” Tod slouched over his desk, rubbing his face with his hands like he was trying to wake himself up. “She called me, told me what had happened. They were arguing and— She just shoved him. All she did was shove him. I know it’s not right to shove a person, but she never meant for anything like this to happen.”

  “I know.” Rowen believed that. Karen didn’t strike her as someone who would murder a person out of anger. Clearly, she was prepared to hide the act, though.

  “I was right across the street, so I rushed over there. We had to hurry so the janitor wouldn’t catch us. Honestly, I think part of me wanted him to catch us. He never did.”

  “You can come forward now,” said Rowen.

  Tod nodded. “I think… I think that would be for the best. Will you… Would you call the police for me?”

  “Of course.” Rowen stood up and headed to the door. Once outside of it, she removed her phone from her purse.

  Tina looked up at her, grinning. “Great news, huh?”

  “What? That we have our culprits?”

  “No—Well, that too. I was thinking more about Peony being innocent.”

  “What?” Rowen wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

  “Didn’t you hear him? They hid the body that morning. Peony didn’t hex anyone until later that night. I know. I was with her.”

  Rowen felt a slow smile creeping on to her face. “You’re right.” She hadn’t even noticed.

  “You think we can get Channel 2 to run that as a news story?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re only willing to report things about us when it’s fearmongering.” Still, Rowen was glad. “We’ll just tell Peony. It’s enough that she knows.”

  Epilogue

  “Why are you wearing blue?” Rowen whispered as she and her husband met up behind the old video store.

  “It compliments my eyes.” Eric wasn’t wrong. It was just more likely that he had finished with a client and come straight here. “What are you carrying?”

  Rowen shifted the canvases in her arms. “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Whatever.” Eric went to the back door. “You ready?” he asked.

  “Need me to get the lock?”

  “No need.” Eric pulled keys from his pocket and jangled them in front of Rowen.

  “Where’d you get those?”

  “Lucy. Work smarter, not harder. She gave me the passcode to the alarm, too.”

  Rowen supposed that made sense. She was the one who had suggested sneaking in again after all. It seemed her favorite hobby in the world was annoying Hawthorne in Seraphina’s stead. Rowen had only mentioned wanting to get in there after hours again in passing. Lucy hadn’t even asked her why. She had just promised her that, if she did get caught, she would get her out of trouble. She was buying Hawthorne’s home after all. He didn’t want to screw that up.

  The art show was going for another couple of weeks after recent events. Tod had confessed and Karen had followed in his footsteps soon enough. Her lawyer had probably pushed for it. Either way, it had drummed up a lot of interest in art. There were several reasons that Rowen wanted in tonight. The first thing she did was feel around for Dayveed. She did that as Eric hurried to turn the alarm off.

  “Dayveed,” Rowen called. “Are you still here?” She walked to the front of the building, toward his artwork. “Your style is derivative and you’re completely overrated.”

  “Any sign of him?” asked Eric, coming back to her side.

  “Not that I can feel. I think he moved on.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Rowen nodded. “I don’t think he wanted to stick around once he wasn’t a mystery anymore. I hear artists can be finicky like that… Speaking of which…” Rowen went to Nathan’s art on the wall.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Eric asked. “I agreed to help, but I didn’t sign up for an actual art heist.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m just going to carefully hide it in the back. Give me a hand here?”

  Eric helped Rowen take Nathan’s art down. She replaced the first two pieces with Peony’s work and the last with the janitor’s. “Much better.”

  “They’re definitely going to notice this in the morning you know.”

  “Oh, I know. That’s why I ran it by Lucy first. I even mentioned it to Philip and Reginald.”

  “And they were all okay with it?”

  It had been Lucy’s idea, frankly. Philip and Reginald both agreed that he deserved it. Their little vacation in Lainswich still wasn’t over. Sure they had said they were leaving, but they had yet to. Rowen was beginning to wonder if they ever would. At least her aunts seemed to be enjoying having them around a while longer.

  “So this is more like an elaborately illegal prank than your typical break in.” Eric shook his head in either amusement or disapproval as he mounted the last picture. It might have been both.

  “Something like that. Thanks for helping me, dear.” Rowen stood on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

  “Thanks for actually inviting me this time.

  *The End*

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